In Russian and French Prisons : Chapter 8 : In French Prisons

1887

People

(1842 - 1921) ~ Russian Father of Anarcho-Communism : As anarchism's most important philosophers he was in great demand as a writer and contributed to the journals edited by Benjamin Tucker (Liberty), Albert Parsons (Alarm) and Johann Most (Freiheit). Tucker praised Kropotkin's publication as "the most scholarly anarchist journal in existence." (From : Spartacus Educational Bio.) • "...let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope, the hope of victory, which makes revolutions." (From : "The Spirit of Revolution," by Peter Kropotkin, fi....) • "The communes of the next revolution will proclaim and establish their independence by direct socialist revolutionary action, abolishing private property. When the revolutionary situation ripens, which may happen any day, and governments are swept away by the people, when the middle-class camp, which only exists by state protection, is thus thrown into disorder, the insurgent people will not wait until some new government decrees, in its marvelous wisdom, a few economic reforms." (From : "The Commune of Paris," by Peter Kropotkin, Freedo....) • "...the strength of Anarchy lies precisely in that it understands all human faculties and all passions, and ignores none..." (From : "The Conquest of Bread," by Peter Kropotkin, 1906.)

This text was taken from In Russian and French Prisons, London: Ward and Downey; 1887.

In Russian and French Prisons

by P. Kropotkin

CHAPTER VIII

IN FRENCH PRISONS

The St. Paul prison at Lyons, where I spent the first three months of my incarceration, is not one of those old, dilapidated, and damp dungeons which are still resorted to in many French provincial towns for lodging prisoners. It is a modern prison, and pretends to rank among the best 'prisons departementales'. It covers a wide area enclosed by a double girdle of high walls; its buildings are spacious, of modern architecture, and clean in aspect; and in its general arrangement the modern ideas in penitentiary matters have been taken into account, as well as all necessary precautions for making it a stronghold in the case of a revolt. Like other departmental prisons, its destination is to receive those prisoners who are awaiting their trial, as also those of the condemned whose penalty does not exceed one year of imprisonment. A subterraneous gallery connects it with another spacious prison for women_the St. Joseph. ' It was on a Dacember night that I arrived there from Thonon, accompanied by three gendarmes. After the usual questions, I was introduced into a pistole which had been cleaned and heated for receiving me, and this pistole became my abode until the following March.

On a payment of six francs per month and three francs to the waiter, each prisoner in carcerated for the first time may hire a pistole during his preventive incarceration, and thus avoid living in the cells. The pistole is also a cell, but it is somewhat wider and much cleaner than the cells proper. A deep window under the ceiling gives enough of light, and six or seven paces may be measured on its stone pavement, from one corner to the opposite one. It has a clean bed and a small iron stove heated with coke, and for one who is occupied and is accustomed to solitude it is a tolerably comfortable dwelling-place---provided the in carceration does not last too long.

Not so the cells, which occupy a separate wing of the prison. Their arrangement is the same as everywhere now in Europe: you enter a broad and high gallery, on both sides of which you see two or three stories of iron balconies; all along these balconies are the doors of the cells, each of which is ten feet long and six or seven feet wide, and has an iron bed, a small table, and a small bench, all three made fast to the walls. These cells are very dirty at Lyons, full of bugs, and never heated, notwithstanding the wetness of the climate and the fogs, which rival in density if not in color, those of London. The gas-burner is never lighted, and so the prisoner remains in an absolute obscurity and idleness from five, or even four on a winter night, until the next morning. Each prisoner himself cleans his cell; that is, he descends every morning to the yard to empty and wash his bucket with dirty water, and he enjoys its exhalations during the day. Even the simplest accommodation for avoidiog this inconvenience, which we found later on at Clairvaux, has not been introduced at Lyons. Of course, no occupation is given to the prisoners during the preventive incarceration, and they mostly remain in perfect idleness throughout the day. The prison begins to exercise its demoralizing influence as soon as the prisoner has entered within its walls.

Happily enough, the imprisonment before the trial is not so dreadfully protracted as in my own mother-country. If the affair is not too complicated, it is brought before the next assizes, which sit every three months, or before the following ones; and cases where the preventive incarceration lasts for more than ten or twelve months are exceptional. As to those affairs which are disposed of by the Police Correctionnelle Courts, they are usually terminated_always by a condemnation_in the course of one month, or even a fortnight. A few prisoners. already condemned, are also kept in the cells_there being a recent law which permits the prisoners to make their time in cellular imprisonment, three months of which are counted as four months of the penalty.

This category, however, is not numerous, a special permission of the Ministry being necessary in each separate case. Small yards, paved with asphalte, and one of them subdivided into three narrow compartments for the inmates of the cellular department, occupy the spaces between the high wings of the prison. There the prisoners take some exercise, or spend several hours in such work as may be done out-doors. Every morning I could see from my window some fifty men descending into the yard; there, taking seats on the asphalte pavement, they were beating the wound-off cocoons from which the floss silk is obtained. Through my window, or while occasionally passing by, I sometimes saw also swarms of boys invading one of the yards; and at a three years' distance I cannot remember these boys without a sad feeling and heartburn.

The condemnations pronounced against children by the always condemning Police Correctionnelle Courts are, in fact, much more ferocious than those pronounoed against adults. The adult may be condemned to a few months or a few years of imprisonment; the boy is invariably sent for the same crime to a "House of Correction," to be kept there until his eighteenth or twenty-first year. When the prosecutions against the Anarchists at Lyons had reached their culminating-point, a boy of fifteen, Cirier, was condemned by the Lyons Court of Appeal to be kept in prison until the age of twenty-one, for having abused the police in a speech pronounced at a public meeting.

The president of the same meeting, for exactly the same offense, was condemned to one year of imprisonment, and he is long since at liberty, while the boy Cirier will remain for several years more in prison. Similar condemnations are quite usual in French Courts. I do not exactly know what the French penitentiary colonies and reformatories for children may be, the opinions which I have heard being very contradictory. Thus I was told that in the colonies the children are treated not very badly, especially since improvements have been introduced of late;* but I was told also, on the other side, that a few years ago, in a penitentiary colony in the environs of Clairvaux, the children were unscrupulously overworked by a person to whom they were entrusted, or rather rented by the State, and that they were abused. At any rate, we saw at Lyons numbers of boys-- mostly runaways and "incorrigible ones" from the penitentiary colonies; and to see the education given to these poor boys was really awful. Brutalized as they are by the warders, and left without any honest and moralizing influence, they are foredoomed to become permanent inmates of prisons, and to die in a central prison, or in New Caledonia. The warders and the priest of the St. Paul prison were unanimous in saying that the only desire which day and night haunts these young people is that of satisfying the most abject passions. In the dormitories, in the church, in the yards, they are always perpetrating the same shameful deeds. When we see the formidable numbers of the attentats a la pudeur brought before the Courts every year, let us always remember that the State itself maintains, at Lyons and in fact in all its prisons, special nurseries for preparing people for those crimes. I seriously invite, therefore, those who elaborate schemes for the legal extermination of recondemned convicts in New Guinea, to hire, for a fortnight or so, a pistole at Lyons, and to re-exramine there their foolish schemes. They would perceive that they begin their reforms from tbe wrong end, and that the real cause of the recidive lies in the perversion due to such infection-nests as the Lyons prison is. As for myself, I suppose that to lock up hundreds of boys in such infection-nests is surely to commit a crime much worse than any of those committed by any of the convicts themselves.

On the whole, the prisons are not places for teaching much honesty, and the St. Paul prison makes no exception to the rule. The lessons in honesty given from above are not much better than those imparted fram below, as will be seen from what follows. Two different systems are in use in French prisons for supplying the inmates with food, dress, and other necessaries. In some of them the State is the undertaker who supplies both food and dress, as also the few other things which the prisoner can purchase at the canteen with his own money (bread, cheese, some meat; wine and tobacco for those who are not yet condemned, prison knives, combs, brushes, paper, and so on). In this case, it is the State which raises a certain percentage, varying from three to nine-tenths on the payment due to the prisoner for the work he has done in prison, either for the State, or for private undertakers; three-tenths of the wages are retained if the prisoner is under preventive incarceration; five tenths if he is condemned for the first time; and six, seven, eight, or nine-tenths if he has had one, two, three, four, or more previous condemnations; one tenth of the salary always remaining for the prisonor, whatever the number of condemnations. In other prisons the whole is rented to a private undertaker, who is bound to supply everything due in accordance with regulations. The undertaker in this case raises the just-named tenths on the salaries of the prisoner, and he is paid, moreover, by the State a few centimes per day for each prisoner. As to those inmates who find it more advantageous to labor for the trade outside (skilled shoemakers, tailors, and scribes are often in this case), they are bound to pay to the undertaker a certain redemption money-mostly 10d. per day_and then they are dispensed from compulsory labor. Now, the St. Paul prison is established on the second system; everything is supplied by a private undertaker, and I must confess that everything is of the worst quality. The undertaker unscrupulously robs the prisoners. Of course the food is far from being as bad as it is in Russian prisons, but still it is very bad, especially if compared with what it is at Clairvaux. The bread is of a low quality, and the soup and ratin of boiled rice, or kidney-beans, are offer execrable. As to the canteen, everything is dear and of the lowest kind; while the Clairvaux administration supplied us for threepence a piece of good steak with potatoes, we paid at Lyons sixpence for a slice of very bad boiled meat, and in the same proportion for everything.

How the works are conducted and paid at
Lyons I cannot judge from my own experience,
but the above account does not inspire much
confidence in the honesty of the enterprise.
As to the dress, it is of the worst kind,and
also much inferior to what we saw at Clairvaux,
where also it leaves very much to desire. When
taking my daily walk in one of the yards at
Lyons, I often saw the recently condemned
peop]e going to change their own dress for
that of the prisoners, supplied by the under
takers. They were mostly workmen, poorly
but still decently dressed_as French workmen,
even the poorest, usually are. When they had,
however, put on the uniform of the prison_
the brown jacket, all covered with multicolored
rage roughly sewn to cover the holes, and the
patched-up trousers six inches too short to
reach the immense wooden shoes_they came
out quite abashed with the ridiculous dress
they had assumed. The very first step of the
prisoner within the prison walls was thus to
be wrapped up in a dress which is in itself a
story of degradation.

I did not see much of the relations between
the administration and the common-law
prisoners at Lyons. But I saw enough to
perceive that the warders mostly old police
soldiers_maintained all the well-known brutal
features of the late Imperial police. As to the
higher administration, it is pervaded with the
hypocrisy which characterizes the ruliog classes
at Lyons. To quote but one example. The
Director of the prison had reiterated to me on
many occasions the formal promise of never
sequestrating any of my letters without letting
me know that such letters had been confiscated.
It was all I claimed. Notwithstanding that,
several of my letters were confiscated, without
any notice, and my wife, ill at that time,
remained anxious- without news from me. One
of my letters, stolen in this way, was even
transmitted to the Prooureur Fabreguettes,
who read it before the Court of Appeal. I
might quote several other examples, but this
one will do.

There is in our system of prisons a feature
well worthy of notice, but completely lost sight
of, and which I would earnestly commend to
the attention of all interested in penal matters.
The leading idea of our penal system is obviously to punish those who have been recognized as
"criminals;" while in reality the penalty of
several years of imprisonment hurts much less
the "criminal" than people quite innocent_
that is, his wife and children. - However hard
the conditions of prison-life, man is so made
that he finally accommodates himself to these
conditions, and considers them as an unavoid
able evil, as soon as he cannot modify them.
But there are people--the prisoner's wife and
his children_who never can accommodate
themselves to the imprisonment of the man
who was their only support in life. The
judges and lawyers who so freely pronounce
sentences of two, three, and five years of
imprisonment_have they ever reasoned about
the fate they are preparing for the prisoner's
wife ? Do they know how few are the women
who can earn more than six or seven shillings
per-week? And do they know that to live
with a family on such a salary means sheer
misery with all its dreadful consequences?
Have they ever reflected also about the moral
sufferings which they are indicting on the
prisoner's wife_the despising of her neighbors,
the sufferings of the woman who naturally
exaggerates those of her husband, the preoccupations for the present and the future ? . . .
Who can measure all these sufferings, and count
the tears shed by a prisoner's wife ?

If the slightest attention were ever given to
the sufferings of the prisoner's kinsfolk, surely the
inventors of schemes of civilized prisons would
not have invented the reception-halls of the
modern dungeons. They would have said to
themselves that the only consolation of the
prisoner's wife is to see her husband, and they
would not have inflicted on her new and quite
useless sufferings, and planned those halls
where everything has been taken into account
--everything excepting the wife who comes once
a week to cast a glance on her husband, and to
exchange a few words with him.

Imagine a circular vaulted hall, miserably
lighted from above. If you enter it at the
reception-hours, you are literally stunned. A
clamor of some hundred voices speaking, or
rather crying all at once, rises from all parts of
it towards the vault, which sends them back
and mingles them into an infernal noise, to
gether with the piercing whistles of the warders,
the grating of the locks, and the clashing of
the keys. Your eyes must be first accustomed
to the darkness before you recognize that the clamor of voices comes from six separate
groups of women, children, and men crying all
at once to be heard by those whom they address.
Behind these groups, you perceive along the
walls six other groups of human faces, hardly
distinguishable in the darkness behind iron-wire
networks and iron bars. You cannot divine at
once what is going on in these groups. The
fact is, that to have an interview with his kins
folk the prisoner is introduced, together with
four other prisoners, into a small dark coop, the
front of which is covered with a thick network
and iron bars. His kinsfolk are introduced
into another coop opposite, also covered with
iron bars, and separated from the former by
a passage three feet wide, where a warder
is posted. Each coop receives at once five
prisoners; while in the opposite coop some
fifteen men, women, and children_the kinsfolk
of the five prisoners_are squeezed. The inter
views hardly last for more than fifteen or
twenty minutes; all speak at once, hasten to
speak, and amid the clamor of voices, each
of which is raised louder and louder, one soon
must cry with all his strength to be heard.
After a few minutes of such exercise, my wife
and myself were voiceless, and were compelled simply to look at each other without speaking,
while I climbed on the iron bars of my
coop to raise my face to the height of a
small window which feebly lighted the coop
from behind; and then my wife could perceive
in the darkness my, profile on the gray ground
of the window. She used to leave the reception
hall saying that such a visit is a real torture.
I ought to say a few words about the Palais
de Justice at Lyons, where we were kept for ten
days during our trial. But I should be com
pelled to enter into such disgusting details that
I prefer to go on to another subject. Suffice it
to say that I have seen rooms where the arrested
people were awaiting their turn to be called
before the examining magistrate, amid ponds of
the most disgusting liquids; aud that there are
within this "Palace" several dark cells which
have alternately a double destination: some
tunes they are literally covered with human
excretions; and a few days later, after a hasty
sweep, they are resorted to for locking up newly
arrested people. Never in my life had I seen
anything so dirty as this Palace, which will
always remain in my recollections as a palace of
filth of all descriptions. It was with a real
feeling of relief that I returned from thence to my pistole, where I remained for two months more, while most of my comrades addressed the
Court of Appeal This last confirmed, of
course, the sentences pronounced by order of
Government in the Police Correctionnelle
Court; and a few days later, on March 17,
1883, we were brought in the night, in great
secrecy, and with a ridiculous display of police
force, to the railway-station. There we were
packed up in cellular wagons to be transported
to the "Maison Centrale" of Clairvaux.
It is remarkable how so many improvements
in the penitentiary system, although made with
excellent intentions of doing away with some
evils, always create, in their turn, new evils, and
become a new source of pain for the prisoners.
Such were the reflections which I made when
locked up in a cell of the cellular wagon which
was slowly moving towards Clairvaux. A French
cellular wagon is an ordinary empty wagon,
in the interior of which a light frame-work
consisting of two rows of cells, with a passage
between, has been coostructed. But I am
afraid of conveying a false and exaggerated
impression to my readers when I write "two
rows of cells." "Two rows of cupboards"
would be more correct, for the cells are just the size of small cupboards, where one may sit down
on a narrow bench, touching the door with his
knees and the sides with his elbows. One need
not be very fat to find it difficult to move
within this narrow space; and he need not be
too much accustomed to the fresh breezes of the
sea-side to find difflculties in breathing therein.
A small window protected by iron bars, which
is cut through the door of the cupboard, would
admit enough air; but to prevent the prisoners
from seeing one another and talking, there is an
additiona1 little instrument of torture in the
shape of a Venetian blind, which the warders
close as soon as they have locked up somebodg
in the cupboard. Another instrument of torture
is an iron stove, especially when it runs at full
speed to boil the potatoes and roast the meat
for the warders' dinner. My fellow-prisoners,
all workmen of a great city, accustomed to the
want of fresh air in their small workshops, did
not actually suffocate, but two of us were
prevented from fainting only by being allowed
to step out of our respective cupboards and to
breathe some air in the passage between.

Happily enough, our journey lasted only fifteen
hours; but I have Russian friends, who were
expelled from France, and who have spent more than forty-eight hours in a cellular wagon on
their way from Paris to the Swiss frontier, the
wagon being left in the night at some station,
while the warders called at the Macon and other
prisons.

The worst is, however, that the prisoners are
completely given up to the meroy of the two
warders; if the warders like, they put the cuffs
on the hands of the prisoners already locked up
in the cupboards, and they do that without any
reason whatever; and if they like better, they
moreover, chain the prisoners' feet by means of
irons riveted to the floor of the cupboards. All
depends upon the good or bad humor of the
warders, and the depth of their psychological
deductions. On the whole, the fifteen hours
which we spent in the cellular wagon remain
among tbe worst reminiscences of all my com
rades, and we were quite happy to enter at last
the cells at Clairvaux.

The central prison of Clairvaux occupies the
site of what formerly was the Abbey of St.
Bernard. The great monk of the twelfth
century, whose statue, carved in stone, still
rises on a neighboring hill, stretching its arms
towards the prison, had well chosen his residence
at the mouth of a fine little dale supplied with excellent water from a fountain, and at the
entrance to a wide and fertile plain watered by
the Aube. Wide forests cover still the gentle
slopes of the hills, whose flanks supply good
building-stone. Several lime-kilos and forges
are scattered round about, and the Paris and
Belfort railway runs now within a mile from
the prison.

During the great Revolution the abbey
was confiscated by the State, and its then
extensive and solid buildings became, in
the earlier years of our century, a Depot de
Mendicite. Later on, their destination was
changed, and now the former abbey is a
" Maison de Detention et de Correction," which
shelters about 1400 and occasionally 2000 in
mates. It is one of the largest in France; its
outer wall_the mur d'enceinte_a formidable
masonry some twenty feet high, encloses, besides
the prison proper, a wide area occupied by the
buildings of the administration, barracks of the
soldiers, orchards, and even corn-fields, and has
an aggregate length of nearly three miles. The
buildings of the prison proper, with its nume
rous workshops, cover a square about 400 yards
wide, enclosed by another still higher wall_
the mur de ronde.

With its lofty chimneys, which day and
night send their smoke towards a mostly
cloudy sky, and the rhythmical throbbing
of its machinery, which is heard late in
the night, it has the aspect of a little manu
facturing town. In fact, there are within its
walls more manufactures than in many small
towns. There are a big manufacture of iron
beds and iron furniture, lighted by electricity,
and employing more than 400 men; workshops
for weaving velvet, cloth, and linen; for making
frames to pictures, looking-glasses, and meters;
for cutting glass and fabricating all kinds of
ladies' attire in pearl-shell; yards for cutting
stone; flour-mills, and a variety of smaller
workshops; all dress for the inmates is
made by the men themselves. The whole
machinery is set in motion by four powerful
steam-engines and one turbine. An immense
orchard and a corn-field, as also small orchards
allotted to each warder and employee, are also
comprised within the outer wall and cultivated
by the prisoners.

Without seeing it, one could hardly imagine
what an immense fitting up and expenditure
are necessary for lodging and giving occupa
tion to some 1400 prisoners. Surely the State
277
never would have undertaken this immense
expenditure, had it not found at Clairvaux, St.
Michel, and elsewhere, ready-made buildings
of old abbeys. And it never would have
organized so wide a system of productive
work, had it not attracted private undertakers
by renting to them the prisoners' labor at a
very low price, to the disadvantage of free
private industry. And still, the current ex
penses of the State for keeping up the Clair
vaux prison and the line must be very heavy.

RANDOM BREAK!!!

numerous and costly administration, seventy
warders, nourished, lodged, and paid from 45l.
to 56l. per year, and a company of soldiers
which are kept at Clairvaux, bear hard on the
budget_not to speak of the expenses of the
central administration, the transport of
prisoners, the infirmary, and so on. It is ob
vious that the above-mentioned percentage,
raised on the salaries of the prisoners, which
does not exceed an average of 6d. per day and
per head of employed men, falls very short of
defraying all these heavy expenses.

Leaving aside the political prisoners vrho are
occasionally sent thither, there are at Clair
vaux two different categories of inmates.
The great number are common-law prisoners condemned to more than one year of imprison
ment but not to hard labor (these last being
transported to New Caledonia); and there are,
besides, a few dozen of soldiers condemned by
martial courts_the so-called detentionnaires.
These last are a sad product of our system of
militarism. A soldier who has assaulted his
corporal, or officer, is usually condemned to
death; but if he has been provoked_which is
mostly the case- the penalty is commuted into
a twenty years' imprisonment, and he is sent
to Clairvaux. I cannot explain how it happens,
but there are detentionnaires who have to
undergo two or three like condemnations_
probably for assaults committed during their
imprisonment. There was much talk, during
our stay at Clairvaux, of a man, about forty
years old, who had cumulated an aggregate
penalty reaching sixty-five years of imprison
ment; he could fulfill his sentence only if he
could prolong his life beyond his hundredth year.
On the 14th of July, twenty-five years of his
term were taken off by a decree of the Presi
dent of the Republic; but still the man had
some forty years more to remain imprisoned.
It may seem incredible, but it is true.

Everybody recognizes the absurdity of such condemnations, and therefore the detention
aires are not submitted to the usual regimen
of the common-law prisoners. They are not
constrained to compulsory labor, and they
enter a workshop only if they like. They
wear a better gray dress than other prisoners,
and are permitted to take wine at the canteen.
Those who do not go to the workshops occupy
a separate quarter, and spend years and years
in doing absolutely nothing. It is easy to con
ceive wbat some thirty soldiers, who have
spent several years in barracks, may do when
they are locked up for twenty years or so in a
prison, and have no occupation of any kind,
either intellectual or physical. Their quarter
has so bad a reputation that the rains of brim
stone which destroyed the two Biblical town
are invoked upon it by the administration.

As to the common-law prisoners, they are
submitted to a regimen of aompulsory labor,
and of absolute silence. This last, however,
is so adverse to human nature that it has in
fact been given up. It is simply impossible to
prevent people from speaking when at work in
the workshops; and, without trebling the
number of warders and resorting to ferocious
punishments, it is not easy to prevent prisoners from exchanging words during the hours of
rest, or from chattering in dormitories.
During our stay at Clairvaux we saw the
system abandoned more and more, and I sup
pose that the watchword is now merely to pro
hibit loud speaking and quarrels.

Early in the morning_at five in the summer,
and at six in the winter_a bell rings,: The
prisoners must immediately rise, roll up their
beds, and descend into the yards, where they
stand in racks, the men of each workshop
separately under the command of a warder.
On his order, they march in Indian file, at a
slow pace, towards their respective workshops,
the warder loudly crying out, un, deux! un,
deux! and the heavy wooden shoes answering
in cadence to the word of command. A few
minutes later, the steam-engines sound their call,
and the machines run at full speed. At nine
(half-past eight in the summer) the work is
stopped for an hour, and the prisoners are
marched to the refectories. There they are
seated on benches, all faces turned in one direc
tion, so as to see only the backs of the men on
the next bench, and they take their breakfast.
At ten they return to the workshops, and the
work is interrupted only at twelve, for ten minutes, and at half-past two, when all men
less than thirty-five years old, and having re
ceived no instruction, are sent for an hour to
the school.

At four the prisoners go to take their
dinner; it lasts for half-an-hour, and a walk in
the yards follows. The same Indian files are
made up, and they slowly march in a circle, the
warder always crying his cadenced, un, deux!
They call that "faire la queue de saucissons. At
five the work begins again and lasts until eight
in the winter, and until nightfall during the
other seasons.

As soon as the machinery is stopped_which
is done at six, or even earlier in September or
March_the prisoners are locked up in the
dormitories. There they must lie in their beds
from half-past six until six the next morning,
and I suppose that these hours of enforced
rest must be the most painful hours of the
day. Certainly, they are permitted to read in
their beds until nine, but the permission is
effective only for those whose beds are close to
the gas-burners. At nine the lights are
diminished. During the night each dormitory
remains under the supervision of prevots who
are nominated from among the prisoners and who have the more red lace on their sleeves,
as they are the more assiduous in spying and
denouncing their comrades.

On Sundays the work is suspended. The
prisoners spend the day in the yards, if the
weather permits, or in the workshops, where
they may read, or talk_but not too loud_or
in the school-rooms, where they write letters.
A band composed of some thirty prisoners
plays in the yard, and for half-an-hour goes
out of the interior walls to play in the cour
d'honneur_a yard occupied by the lodgings of
the administration_while the fire-brigade
takes some excercise. At six all must be in
their beds.

Besides the men who are at work in the
workshops, there is also a brigade exterieure,
the men of which do various work outside the
prison proper, but still within its outer wall_
such as repairs, painting, sawing wood, and so
on. They also cultivate the orchards of the
house and those of the warders, for salaries
reaching but a few pence per day. Some of
them are also sent to the forest for cutting
wood, cleaning a canal, and so on. No escape
is to be feared, because only such men are
admitted to the exterior brigade as have but one or two months more to remain at Clairvaux.

Such is the regular life of the prison; a life
running for years without the least modifica
tion, and which acts depressingly on man by
its monotony and its want of impressions; a
life which a man can endure for years, but
which he cannot endure if he has no aim
beyond this life itself_without being depressed
and reduced to the state of a machine which
obeys, but has no will of its own; a life which
results in an atrophy of the best qualities of man
and a development of the worst of them, and, if
much prolonged, renders him quite unfit to live
afterwards in a society of free fellow-creatures.

As to us, the "politicals" we had a special
regimen_namely, that of prisoners submitted
to preventive incarceration. We kept our own
dress; we were not compelled to be shaved,
and we could smoke. We occupied three
spacious rooms, with a separate small room for
myself, and had a little garden, some fifty
yards long and ten yards wide, where we did
some gardening on a narrow strip of earth
along the wall, and could appreciate, from our
own experience, the benefits of an "intensive
culture." One would suspect me of exaggeration if I enumerated all crops of -vegetables
we made in our kitchen-garden, less than fifty
square yards. No compulsory work was im.
posed upon us; and my comrades_all work
men who had left at home their families
without support_never could obtain any
regular employment. They tried to sew
ladies' stays for an undertaker of Clairvaux, but
soon abandoned the work, seeing that with the
deduction of three-tenths of their salaries for
the State they could not earn more than from
three to four pence a day. They gladly
accepted the work in pearl-shell, although it
was paid but a little better than the former,
but the orders came only ocoasionally, for a
few days. Over-production had occasioned
stagnation in this trade, and other work could
not be done in our rooms, while any inter course with the common-law prisoners was
severely prohibited.

RANDOM BREAK!!!

Reading and the study of languages were
thus the chief occupations of my comrades.

RANDOM BREAK!!!

workman can study only when he has the
chance of being imprisoned_and they studied
earnestly. The study of languages was very
successful, and I was glad to find at Clairvaux
a practical proof of what I formerly maintained on theoretical grounds_namely, that
the Russians are not the only people who
easily learn foreign languages. My French
comrades learned, with great ease, English,
German, Italian, and Spanish; some of them
mastered two languages during a two years'
stay at Clairvaux. Bookbinding was among
us the most beloved occupation. Some instru
ments were made out of pieces of iron and
wood; heavy stones and small carpenters'
presses were resorted to; and as we finally
obtained_about the end of the second year_
some tools worth this name, all learned book
binding with the facility with which an intelli
gent workman learns a new profession, and
most of us reached perfection in the art.

A special warder was always kept in our
quarter, and as soon as some of us were in the
yard, he regularly took his seat on the steps at
tee door. In the night we were locked up
under at least six or seven locks, and, more
over, a round of warders passed each two
hours, and approached each bed in order to
ascertain that nobody had vanished.

RANDOM BREAK!!!

rigorous supervision, never relaxed, and main
tained by the mutual help of all warders, is
exercised on the prisoners as soon as they have left the dormitories. During the last two
years I met with my wife in a little room with
in the walls, and, together with some one of
our sick comrades, we took a walk in the soli
tary little garden of the Director, or in the
great orchard of the prison; and never during
these two years was I deft out of sight of the
warder who accompanied us, for so much as
five minutes.

No newspapers penetrated into our rooms,
excepting scientific periodicals or illustrated
weekly papers. Only in the second year of
our imprisonment were we permitted to receive
a halfpenny colorless daily paper, and a Govern
ment paper published at Lyons. No socialist
literature was admitted, and I could not intro
duce even a book of my own authorship deal
ing with socialist literature. As to writing,
the most severe control was exercised on the
manuscripts I intended to send out of the
prison. Nothing dealing with social questions,
and still less with Russian affairs, was per
mitted to issue from the prison-walls. The com
mon-lawprisoners are permitted to write letters
only once a month, and only to their nearest
relatives. As to us, we could correspond with
friends as much as we liked, but all letters sent or received were submitted to a severe censor
ship, which was the cause of repeated conflicts
with the administration.

The food of the prisoners is, in my opinion,
quite insufficient. The daily allowance consists
chiefly of bread, 850 grams per day (one
pound and nine-tenths). It is gray, but very
good, and if a prisoner complains of having not
enough of it, one loaf, or two, per week are
added to the above. The breakfast consists of
a soup which is made with a few vegetables,
water, and American lard_this last very often
rancid and bitter. At dinner the same soup is
given, and a plate of two ounces of kidney
beans, rice, lentils, or potatoes is added. Twice
a week, the soup is made with meat, and then
it is served only at breakfast, two ounces of
boiled meat being given instead of it at dinner.
The men are thus compelled to purchase
additional food at the canteen, where they have
for very honest prices, varying from three
farthings to twopence, small rations of cheese,
or sausage, pork-meat, and sometimes tripe, as
also milk, and small rations of figs, jams or
fruits in the summer. Without this supple
mentary food the men obviously could not
maintain their strength; but many of them, and especially old people, earn so little that,
after deducting the percentage-money raised by
the State, they cannot spend at the canteen even
twopence per day. I really wonder how they
manage to keep body and soul together.

Two different kinds of work are made by the
prisoners at Clairvaux. Some of them are
employed by the State, either in its manufac
tures of linen, cloth, and dress for the prisoners,
or in various capacities in the house itself
Joiners, painters, man-nurses in the infirmary,
accountants, &c.). They are mostly paid from
8d. to 10d. a day. Most, however, are employed
in the above-mentioned workshops by private
undertakers. Their salaries, established by
the Chambre de Commerce at Troyes, vary very
much, and are mostly very low, especially in
those trades where no safe scale of salaries can
be established on account of the great variety
of patterns fabricated, and of the great sub
division of labor. Very many men earn but
from 6d. to 8d. per day; and it is only in the
iron bed manufacture that the salaries reach
ls. 8d. and occasionally more; while I found
that the average salaries of 125 men employed
in various capacities reached only 11d. (1 franc
17 centimes) per day. This figure is, however, perhaps above the average, there being a great
number of prisoners who earn but 7d. or even
5d., especially in the workshop for the fabrica
tion of socks, where old people are sent to die
from the dust and exhaustion.

Several reasons might be adduced as an
apology for these small salaries; the low quality
of prison-work, the fluctuations of trade, and
several other considerations ought no doubt to
be taken into account. But the fact is that
undertakers who have rapidly made big fortunes
in the prisons are not rare; while the prisoners
consider with full reason that they are robbed
when they are paid only a few pence for twelve
hours' work. Such a payment is the more
insufficient, as one half, or more, of the salaries
is taken by the State, and the regular food
supplied by the State is quite inadequate,
especially for a man who is doing work.

If the prisoner has had a previous condemna
tion before being sent to a central prison_and
this is very often the case_and if his salary is
10d. per day, 6d. are taken by the State, and
the remaining 4d. are divided into two equal
parts, one of which goes to the prisoner's
reserve-fund and is handed over to him only on
the day of his delivery; while the other part- that is, 2d. only_is inscribed on his " dispos
able " account, and may be spent for his daily
expenses at the canteen. With 2d. per day for
supplementary food a workman obviously can
not live and labor. In consequence of that
a system of gratifications has been introduced;
they mostly vary from two to five shillings, and
they, are inscribed in full on the prisoner's
"disposable" account. It is certain that this
system of gratifications has given rise to many
abuses. Suppose a skilled workman who is
condemned for the third time and of whose
salary the State retains seven-tenths. Suppose further that the work he has made during the
mouth is valued at 40s. The State taking from
this salary 28s., there will remain only 6s. to be
inscribed on his "disposable" account. He
proposes then to the undertaker to value his
work only at 20s. and to add a gratification of
10s. The undertaker accepts, and so the State
has only 14s.; the undertaker disburses 30s.
instead of 40s., and the prisoner has on his
disposable account 3s., as also the whole of the
gratification_that is, 13s.; all are thus satisfied,
and if the State is at loss of 14s._ma foi,
tant pis !

Things look still worse if the great tempter of mankind_tobacco_be taken into account.
Smoking is severely prohibited in prisons, and
the smokers are fined from 5d. to 4s. every time
they are discovered smoking. And yet every
body smokes or chews in the prisons. Tobacco
is the current money, but a money so highly
prized that a cigarette_a nothing for an accom
plished smoker_is paid 2d., and the 5d. paquet
of tobacco has a currency worth 4s. or even
more in times of scarcity. This precious mer
chandise is so highly esteemed that each pinch
of tobacco is first chewed, then dried and
smoked, and finally taken as snuff, although
reduced to mere ash. Useless to say that there
are undertakers who know how to exploit this
human weakness and who pay half of the work
done with tobacco, valued at the above prices,
and that there are also warders who carry on
this lucrative trade. Altogether, the pro
bibition of smoking is a source of so many evils
that the French Administration probably will
be compelled soon to follow the example of
Germany and to sell tobacco at the canteens of
the prisons. This would be also the surest
means for diminishing the number of smokers.

We came to Clairvaux at a propitious moment.
All the old administration had been recently dismissed, and a new departure taken in the
treatment of prisoners. A year or two before
our arrival a prisoner was killed in his cell by
the keys of the warders. The official report
was to the effect that he had hanged himself;
but the surgeon did not sign this report, and
made another report of his own, stating. the
assassination. This circumstance led to a
thorough reform in the treatment of prisoners,
and I am glad to say that the relations between
the prisoners and the warders at Clairvaux were
without comparison better tnan at Lyons. In
fact, I saw much less brutality and more human
relations than I was prepared to see--and yet
the system itself is so bad that it brings about
most horrible results.

Of course the relatively better wind which
now blows over Clairvaux may change in a day
or two. The smallest rebellion in the prison
would bring about a rapid change for the
worse, as there are enough warders and
inspectors who sigh for " the old system,"
which is still in use in other French prisons.
Thus, while we were at Clairvaux, a man was
brought thither from Poissy_a central prison
close by Paris. He considered his condemna
tion as unjust, and cried loudly day after day in his cell. In fact, he already had the
symptoms of a commencing madness. But, to
silence him the Poissy authorities invented the
following-plan. They brought a fire-engine
and pumped water on the man through the open
ing in the door of his cell; they then left him
quite wet in his cell, notwithstanding the winter's
frost. The intervention of the Press was
necessary to bring about the dismissal of the
Director. As to the numerous revolts which
have broken out during the last two years in
almost all French prisons, they seem to show
that " the old system " is in full force still.

And now, what are these better relations
between warders and prisoners which I saw at
Clairvaux? Many chapters could be written
about them, but I shall try to be as short as
possible, and point out only their leading
features. It is obvious that a long life of the
warders in common and the very necessities of
their service have developed among them a
certain brotherhood, or rather esprit de corps,
which causes them to act with a remarkable
uniformity in their relations with the prisoners.
In consequence of that esprit de corps, as soon
as a prisoner is brought to the prison, the
first question of the warders is whether he
is a soumis or an insoumis_a submissive fellow,
or an insubordinate. If the answer is favor
able, the prisoner's life may be a tolerable one;
if not, he will not soon leave the prison; and
if he happens ever to leave it, he will do it with
broken health, and so exasperated against
society that he will be soon interned in a prison
again, and finish his days there, if not in New
Caledonia. If the prisoner is described as an
insubordinate, he will be punished again and
again.; If he speaks in the ranks, although
not louder than the others, a remonstrance will
be made in such terms that ho will reply and be
punished. And each punishment will be so
disproportionate that he will object to it, and
the punishment be doubled. " A man who has
been once sent to the punishment quarter, is
sure to return thither a few days after- he has
been released from it," say the warders, even
the mildest ones. And this punishment is not
a light one.

The man is not beaten; he is not
knocked down. No, we are civilized people,
and the punished man is merely brought to the
cellular quarter, and locked up in a cell. The
cell is quite empty: it has neither bed nor
bench. For the night a mattres is given, and the prisoner must lay his dress outside his
cell, at the door. Bread and water are his food.
As soon as the prison-bell rings in the morning,
he is taken to a small covered yard, and there
he must_walk. Nothing more; but our
refined civilization has learned how to make a
torture even of this natural exercise. At a
formal slow pace, under the cries of un, deux,
the patients must walk all the day long, round
the building. They walk for twenty minutes;
then a rest follows. For ten minutes they must
sit down immovable, each of them on his
numbered stone, and walk again for twenty
minutes; and so on through all the day, as long as the engines of the workshops are run
ning; and the punishment does not last one
day, or two; it lasts for whole months. It is
so cruel that the prisoner implores but one
thing: "Let me return to the workshops."
" Well, we shall see that in a fortnight or two,"
is the usual answer. But the fortnight goes
over, and the next one too, and the patient still
continues to walk for twelve hours a day. Then
he revolts. Ee begins to cry in his cell, to
insult the warders. Then he becomes "a rebel";
-a dreadful qualification for any one who is in
the hands of the brotherhood of warders-and
as such he will rot in the cells, and walk
throughout his life. If he assaults a warder, he
will not be sent to New Caledonia: he will
still remain in his cell, and ever walk and walk
in the small building. One man, a peasant,
seeing no issue from this horrible situation,
preferred to poison himself rather than live such
a life a terrible story which I shall some day
tell in full.

As we were walking with my wife in the
garden, more than two hundred yards distant
from the cellular quarter, we heard sometimes
horrible, desperate cries coming from that
building. My wife, terrified and trembling,
seized my arm, and I told her that it was the
man whom they had watered with the fire-pump
at Poissy, and now, quite contrary to the law,
had brought here, to Clairvaux. Day after day
_two, three days without interruption, he cried,
" Vaches, gredins, assassins !" (vache is the name
of the warders in the prisoner's slang), or
loudly called out his story, until he fell,
exhausted, on the floor of his cell. He con
sidered as unjust his detention at Clairvaux in
the punishment quarter, and he declared loudly
that he would kill a warder rather than remain
all his life in a cell. For the next two months he remained quiet. An inspector had vaguely
promised him that he might be sent into the
workshops on the 14th of July. But the " Fete
Nationale" came, and the man was not released.
His exasperation then had no limits; he cried,
insulted, and assaulted the warders, destroyed
the wooden parts of his cell, and finally was
sent to the black-hole, where heavy irons were
laid upon his hands and feet. I have not seen
these irons, but when he reappeared again in
the cellular quarter, he loudly cried out that he
was kept in the black-hole for two months,
with irons on his hands and feet so heavy that
he could not move. He already is half mad,
and he will be kept in the cell until he becomes
a complete lunatic, and then ... then he will
be submitted to all those tortures which lunatics
have to endure in prisons and asylums....

And the immense problem of suppressing
these atrocities rises at its full size before Us.
The relations between the administration and
the prisoners are not imbued at Clairvaux with
the brutality which I have spoken of in the
preceding chapters. And yet our penitentiary
system fatally brings about such horrible
results as the above_the more horrible as they
must be considered a necessary consequence of
the system itself. But why are these sufferings inflicted on human creatures? What are the moral results achieved at the cost of
such sufferings ? In what direction lies the solution of the immense problem raised by our system of punishments and prisons?
Such are the grave questions which necessarily rise before the observer.